Eleven (11) Caribbean countries have committed to the target of the Caribbean Challenge Initiative (CCI) to “effectively conserve and manage at least 20 percent of the marine and coastal environment by 2020”. With nine months to go before the start of 2020, the Caribbean Biodiversity Fund (CBF) and The Nature Conservancy (TNC) are working to develop a system that accurately measures each country’s progress towards the target.
There have been a number of challenges in designing this system in a way that allows comparison across the region, where some countries have larger Exclusive Economic Zones, or different methods of designating Marine Managed (or Protected) Areas.
The CCI Story Map design will use the Nearshore as the standard and considers both Marine Managed Areas (MMAs) and Marine Protected Areas.
This month (May 2019), the Story Map with its first defined measurements based on data available from the countries will be shared with CCI member governments for verification or justified updating. The final figures will be shared at the annual CCI-CBF Week of meetings in June 2019 in Antigua for feedback from CCI and CBF partners. We know that some countries have already achieved the target, and we will be discussing not only what might be needed to meet the 2020 target, but also how we build on the results and lessons learnt beyond 2020.
